054: The Latinos who inspired the movie Spare Parts w/Cristian Arciniega

I'll introduce Cristian with his letter to Crowdisimo: I am Cristian Arcega, I want to be an Electrical Engineer. I was born in Mexicali, Mexico and moved to Phoenix at the age of six. Despite deficiency in English I learned well and have performed at the top of my class consistently.Years later I found a place to put my talents to action. In high school I joined the Falcon Robotics Team. We Focused on STEM competitions to challenge ourselves. One year we entered an Underwater Robot Competition where we would be tasked to complete a series of tasks underwater with a robot of our creation.

This competition was unlike anything any of us had ever attempted so we entered the University Class of the competition. Even though it was our first time building an aquatic robot and with a budget a percentage of everyone else’s we had a dream. Regardless of the low expectations of our team, our robot and ourselves we went for it. In spite of our minimal budget and competing against the likes of MIT among others we won. We've leveraged that victory to inspire ourselves, our community and youth to create a system where everyone who can dream big believes themselves capable of great things. They believe in their futures, that they can be the best.

This story of success has been retold numerous times; by Wired Magazine in La Vida Robot, by Mary Mazzio in the documentary Underwater Dreams, the book by Josh Davis Spare Parts and most recently by Lionsgate and Pantelion FilmsSpare Parts.

Unfortunately life doesn't always unfold the way we want. Due to being undocumented, a year into my engineering degree my scholarship was revoked due to immigration legislation in Arizona. I was also no longer considered an in-state student and my tuition tripled. I have struggled to remain in school since. Ten years later I have not had the funds to attend college full time and complete my dream to become an Electrical Engineer.

My goal remains as always to get an Engineering Degree and start my own consumer electronics company. I hope to one day use my successes to uplift my community. I have recently started a crowd source campaign through CollegeDream.help to help raise funds to go to college. I hope that you will help me achieve my dream in the best way you can. Thank you.

What you'll learn

• Cristian's dream to become an engineer and make robots
• Cristian's family story emmigrating from Mexico and then living on a trailer park once in the US
• How Cristian a Latino high school student and his team won the robotics competition vs MIT which inspired the Spare Parts movie with George Lopez
• The incredible hacks that Cristian and his team came up with to build the underwater robot with little to no budget and tons of Latino ingenuity
• The immigrant edge that Cristian'and his team had over the MIT kids that enabled them to come up with better more creative ideas
• The importance of preparation to win
• Cristian's keys to success: wanting it more than any other team, putting in the extra time and effort, perseverence, the ability to come back from failure and investing for the future
• Why revoked Cristian's scholarship was revoked because he was undocumented, and why he has not been unable to graduate from college for 10 years
• Christian's crowdfunding campaign on Crowdisimo to fund his education and how you can help

Resources & Links

• Crowdismo Project www.CollegeDream.help
• La Vida Robot Magazine Article http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html
• Underwater Dreams Documentary http://www.underwaterdreamsfilm.com/
• Spare Parts Book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20518979
• Spare Parts Movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3233418/

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